Grieving Daughter Calls NY Criminal Justice System That Went Easy on Her Mom's Killer a "F—ing Joke"
New York Needs to Boot Activist Judges & Allow Preventive Detention
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For all the left-wing pronouncements for helping those falsely accused or unfairly incarcerated, an awful lot of innocents are ending up as collateral damage in their crusade for social justice — an endeavor that is appearing more and more to be contrary to actual justice.
Criminal justice is zero sum. As soon as you start prioritizing defendants over victims, you risk benefiting criminals at the expense of innocents unless you thread the needle with caution and due diligence. Instead, what we’re seeing is a reckless disregard for New Yorkers’ public safety in the name of the progressive agenda.
As yet another victim of this system, the grieving daughter of 57-year-old Jackie Billini, a Washington Heights woman allegedly killed by 31-year-old Lenue Moore, is speaking out.
In a recent interview with the New York Post, the daughter, 32-year-old Natalie Questa, called it a “fucking slap in the face” that Moore — months before the double homicide — was out on $500 bail after being arrested for a previous incident on April 11th where he allegedly broke into Billini’s apartment and violently attacked her over an on-going dispute over her dogs.
In that incident, Moore allegedly broke Billini’s arm as he pushed the door in and attacked her boyfriend with a hammer while they tried to hold the door closed.
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Moore was charged with assault and attempted burglary after the attack. Prosecutors asked the judge to set $15,000 cash bail or $30,000 bond. Moore had no previous criminal record, but prosecutors argued that the case was “serious and violent.”
Unfortunately, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Melissa Lewis not only set bail lower — $5,000 cash / $5,000 bond — she also only required Moore to put up just 10 percent, or $500, to remain free until his May 18th arraignment.
After arraignment, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice April Newbauer kept the same bail conditions in place, despite prosecutors arguing otherwise. The court issued a restraining order against Moore, but it ultimately proved useless.
On September 29th, one day after Moore appeared in court for the April incident, he allegedly shot and killed Billini, her nephew Levaughn Harvin, and her dog. Neighbors told the NY Post that Billini asked Harvin to keep her company, as she was fearful of Moore. He was on the run for almost a month before finally being arrested by US Marshalls on October 26th.
In tragic irony, Billini was an analyst for the state courts in the Bronx. A family member told the NY Daily News that she was close to retirement.
Speaking with the Post, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration backed up the judge’s decision in the April break-in case and asserted that bail is required only to make sure a defendant comes back to court, which Moore had done.
“The criminal court judge followed the law in determining the defendant’s release status,” [Al] Baker said in a statement. “The criminal court judges in this case weighed everything before them to set bail and to make the best decisions possible in the interest of justice.”
This statement represents the delusion of the officials presiding over our criminal justice system. Their excuse is that they did the right thing because the only thing bail laws are supposed to do in New York is ensure defendants return to court. There is no mention of the danger posed by a violent perpetrator because they hide behind a 1970 law that overhauled New York’s criminal code.
Back then, there was intense national debate over whether judges should have the ability to use preventive detention, which would keep someone in jail until their trial date if they were deemed a danger to society. After intense criticism, including from the city’s progressive coalition, a provision that would have allowed preventive detention was removed from the overhaul bill.
Since then, the US Supreme Court has upheld preventive detention’s constitutionality in United States v. Salerno, and other states have passed their own statutes allowing it. Today, New York is one of only four states that don’t allow the practice.
But it’s no secret that New York judges can still use bail to detain those they perceive to be dangerous regardless. The progressive New York Focus writes:
In practice, judges have long flouted the law in arraignment court by citing flight risk as a reason for imposing high, frequently unaffordable bails, even if their real concern is public safety.
“Look, if a judge wants to lock somebody up, they’re going to lock somebody up. It’s that simple,” said Charles Linehan, a former Manhattan prosecutor.
From a strictly legal perspective, bail reform was not a factor in this case since it was bail-eligible. Moreover, the judge did issue bail, albeit a very low one.
And yet, despite that, common sense dictates this could have been prevented. It would have simply taken a robust application of preventive detention after the April break-in based on these facts:
Moore was captured on a surveillance camera breaking into Billini’s apartment.
Moore used a hammer, i.e.: a deadly weapon, which could have easily killed one of the victims.
The incident was a culmination of an on-going dispute, establishing intent and that this wasn’t merely a random altercation.
In a sane New York, these facts alone should have been enough to jail Moore until his trial.
As former prosecutor Linehan quipped, if a judge wants to lock someone up, they can. They can do so today de facto via high bail. In an ideal New York, they will one day be able to do so by preventive detention, like most of the rest of our country, and the federal government.
But if there aren’t willing judges to administer actual justice, crimes that could easily be prevented will continue to happen. As we see time and time again, left-wing judges will use their discretion to give criminals, even repeat serial offenders, the benefit of the doubt.
Either the criminal justice system prioritizes criminals OR it prioritizes innocents. If there is an in-between, New Yorkers haven’t seen it yet. If it’s aspired to eventually be achieved in some grand utopian vision, the rest of us, the law-abiding, no-nonsense New Yorkers will suffer until we get there, which is just a few broken eggs for the omelet to progressives.
NY ranked ‘Least Free State,’ with high taxes, debt, regulation: study (NY Post)
New York once again has the dubious distinction of being labeled “the least free state” in America, according to a report issued by libertarian-leaning think tank The Cato Institute.
The Empire State ranked dead last — 50th — for policies impacting economic, social and personal freedoms in 2022, the report claims.
By comparison, Florida ranked 2nd after New Hampshire as the most free state in the union.
Citing terrible financial conditions, excessive taxes, left-wing ideology, special interests, the Cato Institute has ranked New York dead last for freedom. Since the institute created the index in 2000, NY has ranked last every time. In other news, water is wet, the sky is blue, and there are two only genders.
NY Gov. Kathy Hochul Calls For ‘Media Literacy Tools’ for Public School Students (The Post Millennial)
“Today, I’m directing the director of the division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services to develop media literacy tools for K-12 in our public schools. This will teach students, and even teachers, to help understand how to spot conspiracy theories and misinformation, disinformation and online hate.”
NY Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the measures due to the apparent rise in “online antisemitic and Islamophobic threats.” I don’t doubt that there is an increase in such threats, but given Hochul's track record, this is just a pretext for the creeping control that Albany wants to institute on the entire state. Their playbook has been the same in recent years: create and/or facilitate threats, whether real or perceived, then provide the government-packaged solution.
Why I Am Now a Christian (The Free Press)
[…] Atheists believed that with the rejection of God, we would enter an age of reason and intelligent humanism. But the “God hole”—the void left by the retreat of the church—has merely been filled by a jumble of irrational, quasi-religious dogma. The result is a world where modern cults prey on the dislocated masses, offering them spurious reasons for being and action—mostly by engaging in virtue-signaling theater on behalf of a victimized minority or our supposedly doomed planet. The line often attributed to G.K. Chesterton has turned into a prophecy: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
In a stunning article, prominent ex-Muslim turned atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali has declared her conversion to Christianity. As she writes, she does so not only for spiritual reasons, but as a matter of practicality to fight in what she dubs a “civilizational war.” In the struggle to uphold Western Civilization, she argues, we are ill-equipped without a spiritual grounding.
Just north of New York City in Yonkers, about 1.5 hours away by car or public transit, is a classical oasis in the form of a 43-acre public park, Untermyer Gardens. The site is the former estate of lawyer and civic activist Samuel Untermyer. Admission is free and the garden is open with varying seasonal hours, seven days a week, except for major holidays. More information at untermyergardens.org.
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